Stepping out into a wide corridor, he made his way straight over to a window and stared out, with appalled fascination, at a sea of human flesh pressing up against a security cordon that had clearly undergone heavy reinforcement since he’d last seen it. A blaze of red on the horizon heralded the coming dawn, and he could make out hundreds of bodies, scattered across a no man’s land separating the mob from a nearly unbroken phalanx of sonar tanks and illuminated by powerful arc lights. Black Dogs roamed this no man’s land, while armoured drones buzzed through the air like a swarm of mechanical locusts.

There must be at least two million . . . no, he decided, more like three million people gathered all around the Array. Maybe even more. The land itself had disappeared beneath their swarming mass.

He managed to pull himself away from this appalling sight and headed for his locker, pulling out a duffel bag already containing a change of clothes. He then headed for the gym and emptied the bag on to a bench. Something fell out and clattered on the tiles.

It was an inhaler, he realized. He picked it up and stared at it for a moment, then opened it up to find it was loaded with half a dozen cellophane-wrapped balls of loup-garou. He stared at the device with a peculiar hunger and licked his lips. He should throw it away – indeed, he wanted to – but some instinct made him shove it back in the bag, instead.

He took a shower, standing under a blast of hot water for a good twenty minutes until the heat had permeated through his skin and into his bones. He then put on a change of clothes, grabbed a coffee and sandwich and found a random workstation in the main operations room that registered his clearance as he approached, projecting custom pre-sets on to the dark panels on either side. He first checked his latest messages, all of them internal memos detailing personnel’s duties under the current crisis. Saul deleted them all in disgust.

Not for the first time, it occurred to him that there were very likely people working in the offices all around him who would not hesitate to have him killed simply because of what he now knew. And, if what Narendra had told him about his being trailed by an ASI team was true, it was conceivable that such an order had already been given.

He slunk lower in his chair, brooding, but looked up in time to see Donohue pass by.

A glass partition separated him from the corridor along which Donohue was striding, in an obvious hurry. If he’d so much as glanced to one side, he’d have noticed Saul staring back at him. But the Public Standards agent continued with brisk purpose, his gaze focused directly ahead.